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Hood conditions?


danhelmstadter

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I was up there this morning. We dug a pit at Crater Rock, and the test block sheared with minimal force. A half meter slab popped off. Discretion being the better part of valor, we decided to not take chances. Conditions were highly variable though, and we saw lots of people (at least one that tried to summit). Could it have gone? Perhaps...but who wants to get avalanched climbing the SS of Hood.

Get your butt out there. Check it out for yourself. Don't rely on us to tell you its a go.

 

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well, we got chased off hood today. made it to about 8000ft, top of palmer. wind was blowing a constant 30-35mph all the way up, and then kicked it up a notch. hard blowing snow, and deep powder made for a real fun time. when the sun came out, the summit buried beneath wind driven snow. lots of fun.

forcast had called for 5-10mph winds overnight, picking up to 30-35mph by monday afternoon. the winds started just after 200am, a little earliear than we expected.

oh well, still beat the heck out of going to work!

were going to try again about the end of the month

 

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Thanks all for the conditions beta! I definitely appriciate it. So given that there is a lot of snow on the Southside, It would probably as safe a time as any to say that there would be a soft surface on north aspects?

 

bonathanjarrett- I will get my ass up there. I am still concentrating on Shasta related endeavors at the moment, but Hood is on the horizon.

 

godski5- thanks! I look forward to your update.

 

 

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Climbed South Side on Wednesday morning, leaving the top of palmer at 5.30am. Good surface condtions to Upper Triangle with boot pen around 3", no crampons. Same boot pen to crater rock with isolated surface ice crust. Crater rock slope loaded with loose snow but passed shear test but not by much. So decided to hug the left side of crater rock to the hogsback, boot pen up to 12". Climb to Pearly gates good with traverse in fine shape. left gully great WI2 for 10ft. to summit. Decended West crater to Hogsback, snow on decend was soft but consolidated.

 

 

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Climbed South Side on Wednesday morning, leaving the top of palmer at 5.30am. Good surface condtions to Upper Triangle with boot pen around 3", no crampons. Same boot pen to crater rock with isolated surface ice crust. Crater rock slope loaded with loose snow but passed shear test but not by much. So decided to hug the left side of crater rock to the hogsback, boot pen up to 12". Climb to Pearly gates good with traverse in fine shape. left gully great WI2 for 10ft. to summit. Decended West crater to Hogsback, snow on decend was soft but consolidated.

 

 

Thanks for the info.

 

I am going to be up there this weekend but I am not sure whether our group will be doing the gates or the old chute. Hopefully the gates, but I will let you guys know how it pans out either way. Luckily it looks like the weather may hold off.

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Hood is a big soft pillowy pile of snow. I skied and slogged up the SS today. Good exercise and turns going down are great. The snow is so soft that crampons are almost optional on the Hog and above. My super late start probably had something to do with that. I was the last loper on the hill.

 

For a mid week day the hill was busy. 10-12 climbers/skiers descended on my way up. A few but not all of them summitted based on the foot traffic.

 

Recent posts expressed concern about avi conditions on the SS. I have never seen a slide or slide debris cross a SS route in many years of slogging up it, but we all know about the Mazama disaster, so SS slides do happen. Today while cutting around Crater's east side and heading up the SS W variation I noticed a consolidation or ice layer about 1'-2' down. At times the upper snow pack was breaking from it easily. All the while a number of climbers walked through those areas in the last couple of days, so the morel of the story is...YMMV.

 

John,

Rime is thick on the Crater and Devil's Kit choss on anything in the 50-80 degree range. I didn't go over to I-rock, but checking it out from the base of Crater, rime and snow (mostly snow) predominate on it. I saw no ice on it.

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Conditions on the west face of Mt. Hood are excellent right now! Yesterday (March 8th) we climbed Reid Headwall. There are a few short section of thigh-deep powder, but the majority of that route was styrofoam or ice. There is a lot of rime ice on all the vertical rock formations. It's not really an issue in the couloirs... EXCEPT, if you encounter steeper ice. We negotiated one, 10-foot section of rotten ice with powder build-up. Luckily that section was narrow and we were able to get through by stemming. There was another 10-foot section of bare ice (maybe 70-degrees).

 

We descended the south side face (just west of the Old Chute and Pearly Gates). Preston skied the face while I downclimbed. That aspect is nicely consolidated right now. I'm not sure what the upcoming warmer weather will do...? I strapped on the skis at the Hogsback and we made our way down through chunky ice and more dense snow.... not very fun! Those conditions persisted until we got to the groomers of Timberline.

 

Also, Illumination Rock has much more exposed rock than the previous photo, taken on Feb. 29th. I'll post a picture once I upload them onto my computer.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Anyone been up in the last few days or so? Specifically, snow conditions - anything slid lately on the south/west crater rim?

 

thinking bout comin down Friday maybe or Saturday w/friend for a South side romp but the forecast looks marginal - maybe though, we'll see..

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conditions were not fun for non-skiiers on sunday - deep and shitty, even on the cat-track - above the lift there was some windscoured rime to boot on, but still mostly soft - didn't get upto the hogs back but there were no obvious big slide lines

 

brings skiis or slowshoes if you go

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